Kara Powell has a great post on defining the three types of people who are attempting to initiate forward-style change in the Church. I believe she's on to something (as well as those she cites) with these three categories:
- Relevants — taking the same, “historic gospel” but contextualizing it to emerging culture
- Reconstructionists — taking the same gospel but questioning and revising much of how we think about church
- Revisionists — questioning and revising both the gospel and the church
Simple and clear definitions - it would be helpful in many ways if "emerging" groups defined which of these they would be running with. For example, I once associated with such a group under my own #2 ideology of reconstructing. However, the group's dominant voices were more #3 revisionists... for a short while I served in "kicking at the tires" of them "kicking at the tires," but then God eventually led me on out.
So the bottom line is that sometimes we use the same words with different understandings. Perhaps before "conversation" continues we should agree on the vocabulary.
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